Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Aquaria (~July 2010)

I picked up Aquaria in one of the early Humble Indie Bundles and amazingly played it almost immediately.

It's been a while since I played this, so apologies in advance if I'm forgetting anything!

The controls are simple. WASD to move, and left click a spot to do a small dash toward the spot.

The gameplay is very much a metroidvania style of game. Instead of weapons you get forms. You can play a sequence of notes to shift forms, or just press the number keys. I didn't realize this for quite some time, and had to sing-shift my way into various forms in the middle of boss fights. Just a small note, your third or fourth form is the faster moving one, so don't quit too early because getting around is slow. Also, until you get that form, you can go quite fast by wall hopping repeatedly.

The audio is extremely good with a very good musical tone to just about everything. What I remember of the voice acting was simple but good. The music and ambient audio is really what shines.

The graphics were very stylized and great looking. The animation was a bit blocky during cutscenes, but great during normal gameplay.

The boss battles were tough but good, I distinctly remember killing my wrist by repeatedly clicking the right mouse button to shoot the enemy for optimal damage. You can also charge your attacks to shoot more powerful homing shots, but spam clicking is more damaging to both your wrist and enemies than charged shots. You can also eat food that doubles your normal shooting damage. So that's highly recommended for boss fights.

There are a few items you can get in the game. I think it's just helmets, but they can be quite helpful. They're also quite well hidden. I really liked the exploration of the game, to find the rare items.

Oh, you can also get pets, which are always nice!

I have installed it on my Ouya from the Humble Bundle app, but I don't know how playable it is. I also know its out for iPad which sounds neat, but I'm not sure about the controls. I played it on PC with keyboard and mouse, and that was perfect for me. I did try using a controller on PC, which was easier for shooting but harder to move around faster and shift forms.

If you haven't played it yet, I very highly recommend it. It's a shame BitBlot is not making any more games.

1 comment:

  1. I do agree with the sentiment that the game studio shut down. Although I haven't played Aquaria from start to finish (And am hoping for a Mac Steam release, which probably won't happen for awhile due to the original mac porting company), it is a beautiful game. And I can understand the slight frustration for the controller: the map is completely unnavigable with a controller on vanilla Aquaria: The source version apparently fixes this, but I haven't played it much on that version.

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